Know-How Exchange : Advertising/PR

This is normally handled with direct sales, rather than marketing per se. You will need someone to call on potential advertisers.

Much depends on the scope of the magazine. If it is local based, you would call on local companies. If it is national or international, you would need to call on larger companies who also would be interested in reaching people in this same geography.

You also need to set your advertising pricing appropriately. Given that it is a new magazine, it is hard to do (no history to know how many and who the readers are).

Most of the businesses and media companies are skeptical about first edition. You key selling point should be the distribution. How are you targeting it to youth? Only if the magazine is really targeted you will be successful.

Even if you do have a mechanism to convince advertisers that your magazine is really targeted a lot of them still would like to wait and see for the first issue.

That is why you need to give advertisers in the first issue a lot of extra bonuses. For example:
-free ad in a consecutive magazine
-free advertorial
-free website profile
-deep discounts

I also find that if you can mock-up a cover page and send to your advertisers they are more likely to believe that the magazine would look good.

Make sure that your media kit and ratecards are professionally designed. It is imperative if you are new in business. Otherwise there will be no creditability.

I would also suggest to sell advertising at a normal price, but once you have enough to cover the cost to stop selling and put as much of editorial as you can. At least in the beginning, then you switch to normal ration of ads and editorial but your advertisers will already be used to the normal pricing.

i guess something that benefits them by reaching the youth is for hiring. They could post job/ career offerings on your mag.